Turnkey CNC Plasma Cutter - All Hardware - All Software Start Price USD 4,000.00 Current Price USD 4,000.00 Time Left - Bid Count 1 Buy It Now Price USD 6,000.00 Reserve Price - Start Time Monday, September 08, 2008 End Time Monday, September 15, 2008 Location Rancho Palos Verdes, CA See more about 'Turnkey CNC Plasma Cutter - All Hardware - All Software' Description Here we go again. I ended the previous auction early for a number of reasons. Among them, I was told that my pictures were too dark and people wanted more information. If you want other reasons (and maybe a laugh), read my rant at the end of this description. The price on this unit is very reasonable. If you just purchase a table kit and CNC plasma core, it will cost you $16k. Then you need a computer to run it, software, time to work out the bugs ... Please read!!! The gantry is 72" by 96" on the outside. Pick up in southern California or if YOU know how to arrange shipping, you can do that. We are condensing our shop and do not have room for this unit. It has been working great for several years. Some specifics: Myself and my friend (both Mechanical Engineers) decided to build our own plasma cutter for two reasons. First, the industrial units were extremely expensive ($50k to $100k). Second, the kits at the time (I think the ones now are better) seemed a little "iffy" in their quality and we were worried about servicing the unit down the road. What if the vendor wasn't in business anymore? The unit is built on a frame of 2" by 2" steel tubing. The frame was jigged, aligned and welded to make a sturdy rigid frame. The X and Y drive use all standard industrial parts. The stepper motors are standard size 23 (I believe that there is a spare), the sealed bearings are all common trade numbers (inexpensive to boot). The drive is a standard inch rack and pinion. The stepper motor electrical drives are about $99 each and there is a spare. Finally, we were going to put a Z axis on this unit but never got around to it. If you want, I will include the Z axis parts. It will take some serious tinkering to install it. As far as required manitinaince, all bearings are on eccentrics for pre-load so once or twice a year they need to be checked and adjusted. You need to change the plasma cutter consumables when they are used up. There is nothing on this machine that cannot be replaced or fixed for less than $100, except, of course, the plasma cutter main source. The source has been working fine for many years but I am not psychic. Max Cutting Area: ~48" X 72" Max Material Cutting: ~0.5" on aluminum, ~0.625" on steel (we have cut much thicker but it is not pretty) Core cutting unit is a Thermal Dynamics Pak Master 75 XL + with a machine torch. Also included is lots of comsumables (electrodes, tips, cups ...), I have included a picture of the consumables ... at least $300 worth. CNC is provided by stepper motors driven by commercial drives. The PC talks to the commercial drives through the parallel port.This is a simple design. Unit includes a 1U (rack mount) Windows computer running CNC Pro software. We connect to the 1U using ethernet and drop off the parts to be cut. The CNC Pro software is now available for free so if you crash the 1U, you can get it back. The computer and plasma cutter are "housed" in a rackmount enclosure (see picture). This allows you to stand at the computer to monitor the cutter when it is running. You can make changes to the g-code, manually increase or decrease speed or even manually run the cutter head. The 1U computer has other software (old version of AutoCAD) for creating shapes. Any software that can create .dxf files can use the included SW to convert to g-code and run. Bring your video camera. I will be happy to demonstrate how to go from CAD to drawing to parts in about 15 minutes. The unit was used in a semi-professional environment. We used it to make combat robots for BattleBots, Robot Wars and Robotica. We also used it to make custom robots for NASA and DARPA. It is in great shape and ready to provide years of service to it next owner. Good Luck to All OK, now the rant ... Ebay is supposed to be a microcasm of a real auction. The price for any product should be set by supply and demand. I sold a really nice kiln for $900 (worth $4k) becasue nobody wanted it. I didn't mind, I needed to get rid of it. I tried to sell a $28k server for $3k and nobody wanted it. I am also selling a Honda generator and it has reached much higher than my buy-it-now price. That is usually the law of supply and demand. It turns out that I knew there were four bidders waiting for the last second to bid on the original auction. Two of them had already arranged to pick the unit up. One was actually counting on it to do an upcoming job. Yet, with five minutes to go, there were no bids on the unit. The person who absolutely needed the unit to do a job was waiting for 10 seconds left to put in a minimum bid. But, there was another person who was going to put in a bid with 5 seconds left. I was going to end up selling for just over them minimum bid when the demand was much higher than that. This is the United States and you are free to bid as you want. I am also free to sell as I want. If you are buying a pretty blue cover for your iPod, you can zero bid snipe with no penalty. There are dozens to hundreds of them out there. If you are buying a unique piece of equipment to make money and HAVE to have it, zero bid sniping makes no sense. You can't gage how much interest there is. I think that I have made enough space in my shop to keep the unit. If there aren't any bids with a couple of minutes left in this auction, I will probably keep it.  Place a Bid!